Horn-y
by Michelle H. C. Zhu
Summary: Have you ever wondered what was the function of the horn-shaped things on Placido's head? Jeager does too. Jose and Lucciano end up having to explain.


"… to be a frank with you, mortal," boomed the low voice of eldest tenor, somber and stolid, "even I do not know the etiology behind some of Placido's more… questionable functions."

Jose eyed his younger self squarely on several levels of disapproval. Like his counterparts, Jose held nothing but utter respect towards Z-ONE as He was their savior, their God. But there were rare occasions where Jose couldn't help but allow his mind to wander from the halo-adorned image of an omnipotent idol and question His proficiency as a creator. This was one such occasion.

Even Lucciano—who normally so silver-tongued with matters that involved trolling the hell out of Placido—was stunned into a kind of open-mouth-look-of-aghast sort of silence. Lucciano was a playful little imp, sly and mischievous to give ol' Finn a run for his money, but in his young age, his ring of knowledge didn't extend as far as… this. Lucciano swallowed as his eyebrows did a disjointed salsa. This was creepy.

Despite being the black sheep of the trio and constantly ragged on for all his reckless failures, Placido still nonetheless held an air of grandiose that made him worthy to hold the title as one of the three Emperors of Iliaster. Placido radiated a certain aura of authority from his being, one of silent power and danger, and he commanded a type of frightened respect from his subordinates through his words and actions.

And yet, it would have been very hard for anybody to take Placido seriously in his current state. Even Jeager, who was Placido's (only) subordinate and indeed frightened, was frightened for reasons that didn't actually involve getting a sword jabbed in his face. Jeager was stiff as a board, all tensed up as a kneeling Placido rubbed his head against the jester's arm. A tiny '_meep_' escaped Jeager's mouth.

"S-So, gentleman, do you, um, have any suggestions to remedy this predicament?" Jeager asked, gesturing awkwardly to Placido with his free hand. The tenor in question had a content smile visible on his face and seemed to be oblivious to the gawking around him. His sole crimson eye, which was normally sharp and alert, was now dull and heavy-lidded with sleep. Placido almost looked like he was drunk.

"Well, the easiest thing to do is to cut off your arm," Lucciano said with a serious face, although his gaze was still glued onto the clearly insane Placido.

"_What!_"

"Oh sure. We can take Placido to the lab to can get his circuits reconfigurated, but you'll just get in the way. Plus, clowns aren't permitted into the laboratory."

Jose rounded to the redhead. "… Lucciano."

The boy shrugged. "What? I don't see the big deal. We can always replace this guy with someone else, can't we?"

Jose glared down at Lucciano.

"Gentleman, gentleman… I'm sure there is another solution at hand that doesn't involve, um, the dismemberment of my body."

Jeager laughed awkwardly, sweat starting to form on his brow. He clapped his hands together and rubbed his palms in the manner he always did when he was nervous. The movement of Jeager's arm caused his elbow to brush up against Placido's hood; it took a moment for Placido to realize his pillow had changed its shape before he sidled up to Jeager's arm and found another comfortable nook to rub his head against. The clown shuddered visibly.

"Explain the events that led you to wind up in this situation," Jose commanded.

"Oh, well, it's simple really!" Jeager straightened up. (Once more, Placido followed his arm. Rub. Rub. Rub.) "Here I was being the faithful, obedient servant that I graciously am, carrying out the wishes of Master Placido—"

"Skip the chatter filler," Lucciano snapped.

A momentary grimace, before Jeager instantly reverted back to his smarmy persona. "Of course! You gentleman are busy—which is to be expected, you being the important men that you are. Then for your convenience, I will keep the story as brief as possible, trim it down to a neat synopsis—"

Lucciano growled.

"… _Right! _To the actual events—"

Jeager proceeded to explain what had happened, giving the Tenors long-winded explanations to every small thing that went wrong in the course of the way, all the while trying to present himself in the best possible light by taking a good amount of time to stuff in details. Loosely translated from Jeagernese: "THIS MAN TRIED TO KILL ME BECAUSE HE IS CRAZY and also I might have went behind his back and undermined his authority by sicing the Securities on him at the factory. Such is the life of a clown."

"So I was trying to escap— I mean, uh, go and finish my paperwork… well, the next thing I'm know—Master Placido is all curled up on the floor as if he'd come down with a sudden case of stomach cramps! I immediately thought of calling an ambulance, but then realized publicity would be bad, and the last thing Security needs is more bad publicity what with the Ghosts business and all… And that brings us up to the current state of affairs… "

More uncomfortable laughter.

The two Tenors stared at him.

"I don't buy it," Lucciano finally said after a pregnant silence, "Something else must have happened that you left out in your story."

"What? No, I assure you, gentleman—I swear on my life that everything I just told you was a hundred percent true!"

"Did you come into physical contact with him?" Jose questioned, though it sounded more like an order than a question.

Jeager automatically shifted into his thinking pose, which consisted of one hand cupping his chin while the other arm slid behind his back. Placido tried to follow his movements in vain. "Come to think of it… I might have accidentally caught hold of one of the ornaments Master Placido wears in his hood—" _(while he was trying to make clown shish kabob out of me) _Jeager bewailed in the privacy of his own thoughts, "—but I fail to see how that would impact anything…"

Lucciano looked up at Jose. "What do you think?"

"Our bodies are equipped with special sensors to mimic human somatic senses."

"And what? Placido's sensors are those dangling things in hood?"

Jose's gaze darkened, this topic not really something he wanted to discuss at any length. "Placido is equipped with two sets of sensors. The ones on his head were especially installed to overwrite his assembly code in case his disobedient temperament fell too out of hand and interfered with our ultimate mission."

"Wait… you're meaning to say that you…" Lucciano trailed off, his eyes widening to the size of saucer plates.

Jeager was rather unperturbed as he listened to the Tenor converse using techno jargon that sounded like it came from a cyberpunk future. After all, his previous superior had a bionic arm that could stop rocket jets. One thing that caught his attention, however…

"Sensors? You mean this thing here?"

Wielding his thumb and index finger as a clamp, Jeager gingerly pinched the silver horn thing. As if on cue, Placido let out a content purr.

In the background, Jose's eye twitched and Lucciano choked out some dry sputters before finally bursting out in a, "What do you think you're _doing_? Don't do that again! He's gonna get all weird and touchy-feely—"

Jeager gulped, and yet Placido's surprisingly pleasant reaction kindled Jeager's inherent desire of receiving approval from his superiors. Encouraged by the non-fatal reaction he received, Jeager gently ran his gloved fingers over the metal apparatus, eliciting more purrs from the catbot. Jeager wasn't sure if he preferred being coerced at sword-point to the Emperor acting uncharacteristically like a feline. Either way, he never had to do anything of the sort with Goodwin. Jeager tried to set aside all thoughts of improper conduct and continued performing this bizarre hedonistic ritual while Lucciano made several WTF-ery faces on the sidelines.

"_Will you stop that_—" the redhead screeched.

"Huh? What? But—uh—he—"

"Get your clownish hands off him!"

"But he seems to be partial to this sort of treatment…" Jeager piped up sheepishly.

"I hope you're partial to _not having hands_ attached to your wrists," Lucciano snapped, suddenly darting forward to draw Placido's sword from its sheath and point the massively oversized blade at Jeager's nose.

Jeager yelped at the sight of his old hated enemy. "RIGHT! O-of course, whatever you say…"

A huge arm swept in front of Lucciano as a curtain to block the redhead from maiming the clown.

"Lucciano, that's enough."

Not that Jose particularly cared whether or not Jeager still had his head attached to his body at the end of the day, but Sector Security still needed an assistant director and, fuck if Jose was going to through the hiring process of finding another one.

"Keep the incompetence to a minimum, clown," Jose boomed, "You're dismissed."

"A-ah! Much obliged, directors!" Jeager shot into a saluting pose. He jerked his arm out of Placido's grasp and ran out with a parade of sweatdrops following him, seeming very grateful to have left.

"Inferior creature," Lucciano muttered and crossed his arms in a very Placido-like fashion. "Now what are we going to do with this dope?" He rounded to the dope in question with a mocking sneer and stuck his hands on his hips. "Jeez, Placido, I wish you could see yourself right now. You look positively _pitiful._"

No response. Placido was staring blankly at the spot where Jeager had been standing. He was no longer smiling.

Lucciano's temper flared. "Oi! Are you listening to me?"

At the peak of volume in Lucciano's voice, Placido turned his head at Lucciano. Then he turned around again.

"Why you…!"

"Leave him be," said Jose.

Lucciano soured and made a sulky, foul face. He sniffed disdainfully, grumbling under his breath. His instinctive impulse to mock was rapidly starting to die away as he came to the disappointed realization that laying waste with insults was only fun if the other party was aware that they were being insulted. Lucciano frowned. _As soon as Placido comes to his senses_, Lucciano told himself. He was going to be in a world of humiliation. He won't know what hit him. Lucciano already had a whole line-up of cat jokes and related slurs that he was itching to use; the spectacle he just viewed (albeit disturbing, and somewhat provocative of pity) provided him at least a month's worth of comedy fodder to harass his elder self with.

Lucciano was ready to turn a heel and leave Placido-neko-chan to his own devices when something unexpected occurred. The next thing the redhead knew, he was doing his best rendition of shrieking histrionics.

"Jose… _oh my god Jose_ **_get him off_**—!"

Jose's attention immediately turned to Lucciano's screaming. Placido, in his daze, had sought out a substitute now that Jeager departed and ended up latching onto his younger self, now intent on rubbing his cheek against Lucciano's head. The redhead was thrashing like a dying fish, frantically trying to pull away, far too creeped out by Placido's uncharacteristic behavior to be coherent at the moment.

One of Lucciano's flailing hands accidentally reached out and grabbed the exact thing he was trying to avoid—the horn. A soft, girlish moan escaped Placido's lips. Lucciano froze.

"_JOSE!_"

A massive, metal hand slipped into the back collar of Placido's armor like a crane hook to vertically lift up the incapacitated Emperor so that his legs were dangling in the air. Jose turned a 180 and hauled Placido off. Once he was an adequate distance away and couldn't harm Lucciano, Jose deposited Placido on the floor where he laid as a passive little kitty pile.

Lucciano sniffled and cradled his arms around his legs. "I feel so violated…"

Jose's gaze bore into the redhead. "Quit the theatrics," he boomed, clearly unamused.

The brief thought of sticking his tongue out at Jose flashed through Lucciano's mind, but he quickly dismissed the idea and opted to pout at the ground in a childish petulance. Lucciano side-eyed the catbot. "… the least Z-ONE could've done was given us an instruction manual."

_Indeed_, Jose thought in the privacy of his own thoughts,_ indeed that is not too much to ask for._

"You think… Placido is ever going to be okay again?"

Had Lucciano been installed with x-ray vision he would have been able to see through Jose's face mask and catch a glimpse of Jose's mouth flat-lining into a deadpan.

"He should be functioning normally once we remove his sensors from his system."

Surprisingly, Lucciano responded to that idea with an uneasy look. "You think so…? I mean, Placido really likes those horns in his hood. He probably won't want to part with them."

"What he wants holds no significance. Our bodies were built for practicality, not personal aesthetics. Placido, of all people, should know that."

"Yeah, well, I'm not gonna be there when he wakes up to find his precious horns removed and throws a hissy fit."

"He will manage." Though the generally bored tone in Jose's voice hadn't left, it was now laced through with something resembling agitation. "And if he finds it so necessary, he can fashion new ones—ones without sensors—from scrap metal. For all I care, he can put Wisel Top on his head and drape the hood over it," Jose added with an uncanny amount of agitated stress that Lucciano stopped his moping to peer up curiously at the eldest of the trio.

Had fate been on his side, then perhaps Jose would have been lucky and been able to alleviate the problem. But because the writers of Yuugiou signed a contract promising that fate will never be on the side of an antagonist, it was as if there was a metaphorical representation of somebody saying 'troll at will'? because I think someone said 'troll at will'. And so, commence the trolling.

Lucciano was the first one to sense another presence in the room, having heard the soft sound of padding paws. He perked up and craned his head over to look at the intruder.

Pause. Lucciano's eye widened. He jabbed a finger at it. "Jose… Jose…"

Jose followed the direction Lucciano was pointing towards. His jaw clenched indiscernibly behind his facemask. _For the love of everything good and holy and some things that are not— _

There was brown mound of fur totting across the room on four stubby legs; from a distance, it probably looked like a little turd ball on the burgundy carpeting of the director's office. Except the turd had white spots on it too, specifically around its eyes and nose.

—okay, who left the portal open?

What followed was a silence that stretched over the two tenors while they watched, dumbfounded, as the kitten totted its way over to Placido.

Placido himself was completely unaware of what danger was heading his way. The effects of his sensors were just wearing off and he was in the process of recovering his senses.

"… will someone explain to me what is going on? Jose? Lucciano? I demand an explanation—I… what is this _Felis catus_ doing here?"

Without warning, Placido was hit in the face with all the force of a thousand hairballs. Chaos broke loose.

Placido began screaming as all four paws of the kitten molested his face. It wormed through the crevice between Placido's hood and forehead, its whole body disappearing from sight save for a little wagging tail that swished back and forth in front of Placido's nose. The kitten writhed around in a spasm-like ecstasy and thrashing threw Placido's hood off, and the situation revealed itself for all to see.

In the kitten's tiny pink mouth was a pile of green leaves and tiny purple flowers that had been fastened to the base of Placido's horns by twine. The kitten poked a tongue out and began to lap and chew at the addictive substance, gnawing at the catnip with its tiny rows of teeth and simultaneously biting down on Placido's horn.

_Bite._

_Lick._

_Stroke._

Placido shuddered, gasping. A solitary red eye rolled to the back of his head.

Lucciano began to cry.

Jose broke a nonexistent artery in his head.

With the metaphorical sanity temperature plunging drastically in the room, Jose took charge again. The cat was so doped up with his kitty drug it failed to notice two huge metal hands enclosing on its personal space and scooping it up, raising it until it was eye-level with a very enraged grandpa. Jose eyed the kitty with malevolence. _I am going to crush this feline with my bare hands._

Lucciano scampered over to Placido, who had somehow found his way on the ground and was currently curled up as a jellyroll of euphoric happiness. With a hasty swipe, the redhead removed the now thoroughly chewed-up catnip from Placido's horns.

"_WHAT THE HECK IS THIS?_ Oh god… this is… how did_ catnip_ end up in Placido's hood?" Lucciano exclaimed in near-hysterics, boggled beyond belief. "Who put it there?"

Lucciano rounded to the cat with a slack-jawed expression of distress, almost as if he was asking, '_Who is your owner and what kind of sadistic person is he_?'

The cat only meowed innocently in response.


End file.
